Tom Minor

Freedom of the will—sometimes: Watson’s generous reply to Frankfurt’s hierarchical ordering of the soul

There is a ‘traditional-familiar’ view of the concept of freedom such that a person is

free only to the extent that he is able to do or get what he wants. Depending on where

you stand on the problem of determinism or ‘the strong scientific claim’1as it is more

recently known, this ‘familiar view’ of freedom can be seen as adequate whether our

decisions are determined or not. In this case, it is necessary to explain how it would

be possible for freedom to exist in the sense required for the attribution of moral

responsibility—in a world where actions were determined causally—such is the job of

compatibilists. On the other hand, incompatibilists regard the familiar view of

freedom as insufficient because freedom is an illusion, whether we believe in the

strong scientific claim or not. In the case of the ‘libertarians,’—we are right to

believe in the illusion of freedom, which implies a belief about our freedom to choose

certain courses of action over others and which is critical for understanding moral

responsibility. Libertarians think that if the strong scientific claim is true, it would be

incompatible with our freedom to choose, resulting in a conflict with our notion of

morality: the psychology of freedom requires real choosing and there would be no

such thing if determinism were to be true. Anti-libertarians agree that freedom is an

illusion but say that there is no real choosing because they believe that the strong

scientific claim is true. Incompatibilists (libertarians and anti-libertarians alike) have

the task of explaining what this ‘illusion of freedom is.’2

1 Determinism says that states of the world, including our actions, are strict causal products of earlier states. Epicureans discussed a version of this thesis in antiquity but the brain sciences lead us to believe that there are other explanations for our thoughts than a deterministic universe so the question evolves into a question about the relations between freedom and a ‘strong version’ of the psychophysical sciences which represent our experience as a function of brain-states explained as products of earlier brain states eventuating in determinism in the free will question being replaced with ‘the strong scientific claim’ that conflicts with freedom. (Williams, B. ‘Ethics.’ In Grayling, A. C (ed.) Philosophy 1. Oxford: Oxford Uni press, 4th edition, 2001, pp 576-580)2 Williams, B. ‘Ethics.’ In Grayling, A. C (ed.) Philosophy 1. Oxford: Oxford Uni press, 4th edition, 2001

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Gary Watson, in his essay on ‘Free Agency’3 sides with the compatibilists in

conceiving freedom, in degrees, as the extent to which an agent is able to do- or get-

what he wants. This sympathetic exegesis of Watson’s text will focus on his arguably

‘platonic’ division of the human soul into wanting and valuing and will involve an

exposition of his terminology and theory of free agency and finally Watson’s reply to

Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical ordering of the soul, in his account of freedom of will

and personhood4 will be discussed. In espousing his deterministically neutral

position, Watson tries to avoid a common (and Watson believes, erroneous)

justification for compatibilism, whereby ‘free agency’ is revoked in the example of

individuals who are deemed not to have any control over their actions even when their

behaviour can be said to be intentional.

Theoretically speaking, the psychopathology of drug dependence, compulsive

disorders and clinically recognizable anxiety (as in phobias), provide instances

whereby behavior can be said to be intentional, yet outside of the agents’ locus of

control and thus determined, supporting the strong scientific claim.5 However, these

examples refer merely to a freedom of action and not to freedom in Watson’s sense of

being able to get what you want. Intentionality being independent of agents’ control,

does not in itself prove determinism or preclude the idea of being free do something.

Hence, the argument against compatibilism, that there are cases where agents’ actions

are not free, even though they may be intentional, represents an erroneous fusion of

the notions of free- and intentional- action. This line of defense, however, does not

show that freedom and responsibility are incompatible with determinism and this

fuels the skepticism and rejection of compatibilism. The critic only has to inquire as

to how one would justify attributing moral responsibility to non-pathological people if

determinism were to be true and he will find a lacuna in this version of compatibilist

defense: if determinism is true, it surely must be true for all and not just these

compulsive actors. If compatibilists want to believe in the possibility of freedom in a

determined world, they can not use the example of ‘compulsive choosers’ to make

their point since even their actions could be considered free under this notion.

3 Watson, G. (1975). “Free Agency.” Journal of Philosophy, 72: 8, 205-220.4 Frankfurt, H. (1971). “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person”, Journal of Philosophy, 68: 1, 5-20; reprinted in Kane (ed.). Free Will (Oxford: Blackwell, 3rd edition, 2004)5 Watson, G. (1975). “Free Agency.” Journal of Philosophy, 72: 8 (pp 206)

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Compulsive choosers’ actions may be unfree, but even if they were free actions they

would still say nothing about the truth or falsity of determinism. In other words, one

can be free to act even if determinism is true and one can be unfree to act even if

determinism is false.

This idea of an ‘unfree action’ under the microscope of the familiar view, requires a

propaedeutic distinction to be made between wanting and valuing. Here, the idea is

that the agent is unable to get what he wants or values most because of his own

‘motivational system’; his own will obstructs him from achieving his action and thus

the action is unfree. The notion of free action springs from this idea that an agent may

not be finally moved to get what he most wants. So goes the platonic dictum—that it

is one thing to attach value to something and another thing to desire it; to think

something good is to desire or promote it, thus reason produces action and values

provide reasons for action. How much you want something is therefore not

determined by how motivated you are to value it. Watsonian freedom, as the ability

to get what one wants, is not supported by this platonic distinction between valuing

and desiring, which implies independent sources of motivation.6 Plato, does however,

provide an answer to the question of how ‘what one most wants can differ from that

which is the object of the strongest desire’: what one most wants can be either the

object of strongest desire or what one values most. Again, the problem of free action

is posed because what one desires may not be what one values the most, nor what one

is finally moved to satisfy. Watson, himself, admits the anti-humean logic of his

position, in regarding the falsity of the claim that if a person desires to do X, he

necessarily has or regards himself as having a reason to do X.7

To continue this line of thought (of Watson’s), evaluation and desire may diverge

when: what one desires is not valued, considered worthwhile, or seen as good in the

mind of the agent; and when the object of desire is valuable, but not most valuable

(even though one’s desire for it may be stronger than the desire for what is most

valued).8 This divergence between evaluation and desire, is not so much to do with

the content of the desire so much as the source of the desire and its role in a ‘total

6 Watson, G. (1975). “Free Agency.” Journal of Philosophy, 72: 8 (pp 209)7 ibid8 ibid pp. 210

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system’ of desires, i.e., why the agent wants what he wants.9 Content speaks not of

source, since single desires may have multiple sources. Wanting to eat does not

definitely mean I am hungry or that my hunger is the definitive source of my desire to

eat; I may want to gain weight, nourish myself in preparation for an athletics

competition, or simply enjoy eating. To demonstrate an even rarer form of

divergence; when one places no value whatsoever on what one desires, Watson uses

the example of a mother having the sudden urge to drown her baby or a squash player,

in defeat, wanting to smash his opponent in the face. In each case, no value is placed

on the injury, but the desire is there nonetheless. What stops these agents from

satisfying their desire surely must be reason based on evaluation.

According to these divergences, Watson astutely, and in the tradition of the ancients,

identifies appetites and passions, which include desires that are independent of the

evaluational system (hence their archaic position in the irrational part of the soul), and

thereby allowing for the possibility of conflict between valuing and desiring.10 These

value-independent sources of motivation reinforce the idea of being motivated to do

something deemed unworthy of being done as in the case of the mother and the

squash player, and the notion that a person can be thwarted by his own will. Watson

does not stop there, he even accounts for the complexifying possibility that desires

can influence the contents of agents’ evaluations (temporary as this influence may

be), so that an agent could conceivably have a desire and then think or say to himself

that it is worthwhile or good. These sorts of delusions are contrasted with the

possibility that an activity may be valued and affirmed by an agent even when there is

no appetite for that activity. So I may value the act of having sexual intercourse with

my partner, and affirm this value by taking part in the act even when I have no

appetite for it. The former possibility refers to the operation of what Watson terms

the ‘motivational system’ – the set of considerations moving an agent to action i.e.,

his motivation. Whereas the latter possibility refers to a Watsonian ‘valuational

system’ – as the set of considerations and factual beliefs that produce judgments and

assign values to alternate states of affairs: the ‘all-things-considered’ approach to

evaluation.

9 ibid pp. 21110 ibid pp. 212

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Here we begin to see the strength of Watson’s thesis: free agency assumes that the

valuational system is operational in ranking optional desires in terms of worth. Now,

we may tackle the contentious idea of the ‘unfree action,’ which is translated into the

possibility that the motivational and valuational system do not always coincide. The

divergence between these two ‘systems of the soul’ is thus harmonized when agents’

all-things-considered evaluations determine his actions. To value, however, is as

good as to want, under Watson’s conception and therefore the systems must overlap,

but valuation holds rank over motivation and we may be thankful for this privileged

rationality. Free agency is convincingly portrayed as the capacity to translate values

into action; where action flows from the evaluational system. One could conceive of

one’s evaluational system as the viewpoint from which one evaluates one’s world.

Dissociation from one’s viewpoint, as in the pathological cases of dementia praecox,

psychoses and neuroses of the ego, results, a posteriori, in the sacrifice of any

viewpoint whatsoever and precludes therewith one’s identity as a free agent.

In his last analysis, Watson amicably draws some conclusions on his colleague, Harry

Frankfurt’s ‘platonic-structural’ view of the will, arguing that structural topographies

are irrelevant for the notions of free agency and personhood. A resounding criticism

of Frankfurt’s thesis is that his hierarchical ordering of desires does not tell us why or

how one want can rise above the others with special privileges, without the potential

for an obsessive refusal to identify with any one desire in any one order that could

lead to an infinite chain of higher and higher order desires being formed. Watson

contends that agents formulate values concerning alternative choices with no need to

inquire about second- or higher-order desires: agents simply ask themselves, which

course of action is most worthy (all-things-considered). In this sense, evaluations

occur a priori and Frankfurt’s first-order desires spring from practical judgments,

which generate second-order volitions. This apparent symbiosis between Watsonian

terminology and Frankfurtian pleonastics disguises a fundamental gulf between the

two theories.

It is not difficult to see the difference between hierarchical ordering and valuational-

motivational mechanisms and one wonders why Watson fails to make more of his

discovery that appetites and passions operate motivationally and rationality operates

valuationally, or that it is the convergence or divergence of these operations that

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determine whether one’s action can be called free of unfree. This is especially

frustrating when it stands in such stark contrast to Frankfurt’s unnecessary structural

divisions of desire, which venture to tell us something about free will but, as Watson

himself remarks, fails to achieve its goal. Perhaps academic camaraderie prevents

Watson from dealing the damaging blows that his theory entitles him to, indeed, it

may be that there is more to Frankfurt’s thesis than it is given credit for here.

Essentially, a theory that draws its distinctions from reliable sources, dating back to

antiquity and which are still popular today, as Watson does, appears to be a more

convincing technique in a discourse of any sort of freedom, than the Frankfurtian

concoction of arbitrary hierarchies. Hierarchies that incidentally have no internal or

conceptual validity and which rely on further, even less believable fabrications of

‘ideal’ candidates for the application and attempted validation of Frankfurt’s theory of

personhood and freedom of the will.11

One can be thankful, that Watson, conceives, as he does, of the predominance of his

valuational system, since, it not only accounts for how one’s actions can be seen as

unfree, but how this capacity to obstruct oneself from satisfying all desires, is actually

a good thing. Think of the mother who desired to drown her baby, but because she

placed no real value on that desire, was able to thwart herself in satisfying it. What

heinous crimes would take place, if we had no Watsonian valuational system? There

is an interesting analogy here to the psychoanalytic conception of the Superego. As

the seat of the conscience, the Superego surely lends support to Watson’s view that

faculties of reason and rationality operate on and above the faculties of appetite and

passion, which psychoanalytically would be considered to be the id; the locus of

impulse, desire and instinct. One only need entertain the thought of uncontained

passion and desire in the world, and one realizes the need for a system based on

valuing the worth of our actions.

11 Frankfurt distinguishes between the wanton, willing and unwilling addicts, none of whom have freedom of will. The wanton addict cares not about his addiction and thus makes no second-order volitions to make any of his first-order desires effective, he is not concerned with the desirability of his desires, he is not a person. The willing addict overdetermines his desire to take drugs and can be said to be morally responsible even though he is not free and the unwilling addict makes second-order volitions against his desire for the drug but this makes no difference, since he inevitably succumbs to his addiction, just like the wanton and willing addicts.

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In the last analysis, we can confidently say that Watson, although unintentionally,

defends compatibilism against one of its most pernicious attacks, (mentioned earlier)

that if determinism is true then all our actions and choices, not just those of

compulsive choosers, but everyone’s agency is determined. Watson would reply that

it is false to assume equity between compulsive choosers’ and free agents’ actions and

choices if determinism is true. The behaviour of compulsive choosers, their desires

and their emotions, according to Watson, are radically autonomous and not dependent

on the evaluational system. Furthermore desires expressed regardless of any

evaluational judgment are what lead us to the thought of actions as unfree which is

when agents’ motivation and valuation diverge.

So it would seem that Watson’s theory comes closer to the principle aim of moral

philosophy: of truthfully understanding what our ethical values are and how they are

related to our psychology, in the light of which we make a valuation of those values.

It is difficult to find fault in Watson’s account. The reader is, at least, tempted to

grant his distinction between wanting and valuing in order to understand the claim

that unfree actions do not achieve what the agents really or mostly want. This, of

course, endorses Watson’s definition of free action and agency in terms of being able

to get what one wants, but then that would be his prerogative as the author of his own

theory. Watson, gives a generous reading of Frankfurt’s account, even though he

seems equipped to deal some devastating blows to Frankfurt’s thesis which eludes the

debate about free will and determinism, it so eagerly wants to join. It is hoped that

this analysis has done some justice to Watson’s attempt to deal with a highly complex

area of study, though it seems fair to let Watson have the last word:

“Human beings are only more or less free agents, typically less. They are free

agents only in some respects. With regards to appetites and passions, it is plain

that in some situations the motivational systems of human beings exhibit

independence from their values which is inconsistent with free agency; that is to

say, people are sometimes moved by their appetites and passions in conflict with

their practical judgments.”12

12 ibid. pp 220

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